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Monday, February 20, 2012

Project Who: Alpha Meson Blaster - Part 3

Hello again,

I just have a little bit of an update on progress so far, with a little bit of a write up as well.

Now the original Alpha Meson Blaster was a non-functional prop, as well as any replicas I've seen made of the blaster. This has always been something that has bugged me, as I always wanted to keep it functional; but because of the way things are set up it wouldn't be able to prime like a Nerf Scout normally does. Thus has begun my adventure to modify this one to shoot differently, while keeping as close to the look of the blaster.

I realized the only feasible way of making this functional would be to prime it from the rear. So whether or not you want to make a functional Alpha Meson Blaster yourself, or just want a rear priming scout, this is the write up for you.

First you need to drill holes through the back of the blaster. Be wary of the screw hole. Because this is the only way to secure the blaster from the back you need to keep that intact.

In this picture, You can see the holes go all the way through the back, and through the spring backing plate. Also notice that it does bite into the bottom of the screw port. This is necessary if you don't want to much pressure to jam your gun primed.

Now make two small holes in the top and bottom of the back of the plunger tube. Make them as close to the plunger tube and the center as possible. This will keep the structure sturdy. You may reinforce around there if you like as well, but so far I haven't found it necessary. After at least 20 good test shots, it didn't show any wear.

Now take two pieces of sturdy wire (I used hanger wire) about 5-6in. long. You can always cut off excess later. Hook one end so it returns no more than 1/4 in. If you have too much wire hanging back it will hit the spring backing and you won't be able to prime the gun.

Hook them in the holes like so.

Run them through the spring, catch, and the holes in the back of the gun, and then put it together like normal. With your end result looking like this. You should be able to pull the wires back and prime the blaster, and it should shoot fine if you did it right. You can then do whatever you want to connect the wire to whatever to make it easier to prime.

I am going to be making the top back part of the blaster in such a way that it can hook on to the wire, and slide along the normal slide area to prime. The following pictures just what I used to make some of the other pieces of the gun, using what I already had.

The curve on the bottom of those pieces was a little too low to be the exact size I needed so I cut it out a little more to get rid of the tiny slant on the bottom of those pieces.

You can see the slant is gone the bottom of that curved spot. I used superglue to put the two pieces together, as well as the 1 remaining screw hole on the bigger piece to hold it together, and used epoxy putty to fill in holes and the rest. Once it's done setting I can sand those parts done flat.

That's all the progress for now. It was quite a bit of work, and this was my first time using epoxy putty. It smelt awful, but I have much more to use.

Normally the switch would be on the back of the blaster, but putting it there and keeping the blaster functional would be a little too difficult, so I am going to put it on the bottom of the blaster. It's a worthy sacrifice.

I hope you guys liked the right up, if nothing else. I have enough materials right now to get most of the way through this project. I just need to pick up a small flashlight, an LED, a Switch, and a few other things.